The ZPG Zealot handshake thread party extravaganza

[puzzlegal]

To extend a side-discussion from another thread
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=853427&page=3

@ZPG_Zealot

The actual etiquette in the Western world since men and women started interacting without chaperones has been that men of good manners did not extend their hands to women unless the woman did so first…

In previous places, ZPG Zealot has compared a man offering to shake a woman’s hand to physical assault (and an actual handshake to rape.)

@Batano

I’ve been to France. The Roma women don’t seem to have much trouble touching men when they are harrasing them for money.

@Slash1972

I’d still like you to explain how, if touching is worse than rape, how all of a sudden it becomes ok simply because you are a homeless person begging for money?

@ZPG_Zealot

Only because cultural prejudice makes it difficult for them to obtain other means of earning money. Aside from the fact that there is an ocean of difference between a woman initiating touch and a man demanding it, prevent people from making an honest living, why shouldn’t they turn to crime? And that French official is making a big mistake with his hissy fit over a woman exercising her right to refuse to be touched. It’s not going to encourage assimilation, but further alienation.

I’m going to weakly defend ZPG Zealot here, and say that she admits the women are committing a crime, she just thinks (I assume) that it’s a lesser crime than a man shaking a woman’s hand. Which seems batshit to me, but it’s not completely logically inconsistent, it just encompasses a bizarre assumption about the relationship between men and women.